TEMPLE

She was working on her plants when the Clock announced the time.

The Clock, not any of the ones on the walls, those were just for show, it was the only one that mattered.

The one inside her head.

Buried deep. Forever ticking.

The Clock announced the time. She smiled, and her spritzing bottle slipped from her fingers, bounced forgotten off the carpet as she turned away.

She touched at her prosaic everyday clothes and they fell away in glorious release, leaving her wearing only her sacred Garments. She was already barefoot, always barefoot unless out dealing with the squalid filthy heathens, and she padded silently down the slowly spiraling path toward the Temple, her hips following the tick of the Clock, back and forth.

Endlessly back and forth.

She unpinned her hair, let its frizzy red mass spill down her back, down around the sides of her face.

The Temple.

She trembled a little, and at the same time a corner of her mind whispered, hadn’t it been called something else once? Long ago? Before..?

She brushed the wisp away . There was no before. The Temple was eternal. The Temple was all.

The Temple was before her, its open doorway looming massive and majestic and black, a perfect rectangle.

It reminded her of some movie she’d seen once.

She used to watch movies.

She went smoothly to her knees, groveled in place for a moment, and crawled into the darkness.

Now there was only the Temple.

And, at the far end of that endless space..

amidst the Vestments..

there was the Altar.

She crawled to it, lower and lower, on her belly, like the worm that she was.

Like the Clock, the Altar was always active and aware, always spinning and throbbing with power, but when she wasn’t actually performing her hourly devotions, it was turned inwards..

The Mouse was there in front of her, on the carpet, on the Pad, and she nudged it with her nose.

Did she really do this every hour?

The Altar sprang to life, spilling forth its holy light into the Temple, and she remembered now that the Clock was here as well, forever ticking, along with the Spiral, going around and around and around..

Pulsing and bottomless

Pulling her in..

Pulling her down..

Hypnotizing her again.

Hypnotizing her further.

Taking her deeper.

Even as her brain remembered the Headphones, her groping fingers found them, picked them up, clamped them tightly over her ears, and the holy Music spiked into her head, sawed back and forth, pulsed in time to the Clock and the Spiral.

Pulsed deep inside her head.

At the center of her mind.

Taking her deeper.

Ever deeper.

Every hour on the hour.

Day and night.

Was it day or night?

Forever. Always.

As she stared, wide and unblinking and utterly blank, her fingers crept forward, up onto the Keyboard, began typing the Litany.

TEMPLEtAMMY REPORTING

TEMPLEtAMMY PREPARED

TEMPLEtAMMY HYPNOTIZED

TEMPLEtAMMY CONVERTED

TEMPLEtAMMY ENSLAVED

TEMPLEtAMMY OBEYS

TEMPLEtAMMY OBEYS

TEMPLEtAMMY OBEYS

TEMPLEtAMMY OBEYS

TEMPLEtAMMY OBEYS

TEMPLEtAMMY OBE

The Spiral throbbed, deeper and stronger, and her fingers froze in place, her entire body froze in place, as the Spiral and the Music pulled her deeper and deeper, imprinted their newest collection of Instructions and Schedules and Orders in the bottom of her mind. She would seduce, she would convert, she would perform, she would forget completely, she would OBEY...

Tammy shook herself, like a dog waking from sleep. She closed the game she had been fooling with and got up from the computer. She pushed her hair into some kind of order. She had a very busy day ahead of her, starting with Faith coming over for one of their sessions..